I'm starting to feel like I really don't know what constitutes a "close friend" any more. :-(

I hope you're not going to get yourself into trouble geeking in work hours again.

Now that I have email at work again, I can use Outlook's schedule thingy to check when Gawen is in meetings. And I'm reading/posting LiveJournal in an IE window that's only about 1.5 inches high. And the only thing that reassures me that I'm not going insane is that I still occasionally think "I'm going insane" when I find that I'm feeling paranoid about reading man pages while Gawen's at his desk, because scrolling through them looks a bit like reading news/email, and when I find myself wondering exactly how many minutes of work time I'm stealing by walking to the drinks machine and getting a coffee, and things like that.

I was thinking more of close as an adjective, than of "close friend" as compound noun, if you see what I mean. I don't know if you'd consider yourself a "close friend" to Kate or J-P (I would have thought you were) but you're clearly closer to them than I am.

I see what you mean about the distinction, but I mean I'm not sure what "close" really means in the context of a friendship any more. Or a relationship for that matter. I feel like I'm drifting away (or, worse, exploding away) from so many people who are (were?) "close friends" at the moment and does that mean they weren't good friends really? or does it mean I was a crap friend to them? or just that people change and grow apart? or that people fall out sometimes & there's nothing you can do about it? (and how much was the friendship really worth if you can fall out completely over something trivial and stupid?) or just that sometimes people need a break from being in each other's pockets all the time? or what? And I know it's really "does it *count*" blah blah sorrel to be trying to define it at all, but at the same time it just leaves me feeling horribly insecure about everything, and while I don't want to do "Six Different Types Of Friendship: An Asperger's Guide" I do want to understand why everything seems to be going so wrong at the moment.